In 1989 the United States Postal Service (USPS) started a work-sharing program, by which the Service intended to increase the amount of bar coded mail and reduce operational costs. To promote this end, private mailers were offered incentives to purchase high-speed Multi-Line Optical Character Reader (MLOCR) equipment and bar code and commingle multiple mail streams. Certain make-up requirements were established that facilitated the input of the barcoded mail into the USPS processing stream. For performing this service, private entities were given a discount to process the mail. Volume discounts were instituted which provided incentives to private entities to increase volumes, thus paying a lower cost per piece in postage dollars. To achieve the required minimum volumes, presort entities were started which collected and commingled mail from many mailers.
While the USPS developed a complicated audit procedure, limitations of the production process prevented the USPS from performing an adequate audit on the mailings. One example of this is that a specific mail piece cannot be traced to a specific tray. Rather a mail piece was associated with a group of trays. Thus the acceptance clerk might have to look through 10,000 pieces of mail in over 60 trays to find one piece of mail.
FIG. 12 defines the normal steps required to perform a multiple pass sorting operation needed to meet USPS per-sort requirements. A batch of mail is loaded into a mail sorting apparatus at 700, and the apparatus will sort mail to a series of bins or packets based on a set of rules called a sort scheme in step 701. A bin could be set up to contain one zip code destination called a finalized bin, as will be checked at 702 in the sort scheme. Since a sorting apparatus will have a finite number of bins, and there are many USPS separations required, some of the mail will have to be batched into one bin, and re-run in a second or subsequent pass 705 to complete the sortation required to meet USPS requirements. A bin that is set up to receive multiple zip codes is called a repass bin. For example, a large mailing might require 3000 zip code separations of the mail in order to achieve the desired level of discount. In other words, mail destined for zip code 60513 will need to be separated and placed in a separate container from mail for zip code 60514. The sorting apparatus will make this separation by putting all mail with zip codes to 60513 in one bin and all mail with zip codes to 60514 in another bin.
A mail sorting apparatus typically could have around 253 bins. 242 bins would be assigned to finish zip codes. This finished mail can then be removed from the apparatus, mail from each finish bin can be put into a postal container at step 703, labeled and submitted to the postal authority. The mail for the other 2758 zip separations will be sorted into 11 repass bins 704 on the first pass. Each one of these bins will then be sorted out to 253 finalized separations in a subsequent pass 705 on the sorting apparatus. This mail is then placed in postal containers 703, labeled and is ready to be submitted to the postal authority.
Since the introduction of work sharing, there has not been an adequate method to audit a mailing, since the mail submitted to the USPS is commingled, i.e. pieces of different weight and pieces with different postage affixed (stamped, metered, permit . . . ) are all mixed together in the sorted mailing. Previously mail was separately grouped by the piece weight and by the type of postage affixed. Hence auditing was easier, since all pieces in the mail group being evaluated, had the same characteristics. The old method of weighing the mailing would no longer identify if the reported piece counts were accurate if there were variable weight pieces in the mailing.
Mail is randomly removed from the bin and put into trays. This limited the audit of a mail piece, since any piece could no longer be tracked back to a specific tray. The non-identical, commingled pieces have varying thickness so tray breaks could not be calculated by the system. Another issue is that USPS reports are calculated at the end of first pass. The computer system will produce the required subsequent pass schemes to sort the specific mail to meet the applicable postal regulations, but there are no regulations or methods in place today to confirm that the mail was actually sorted in subsequent passes. Mailers that do not have adequate capacity or time could claim the mail is sorted, and the computer generated reports would quantify this, yet the mail sortation may never have been completed.
Today a mailer will exchange mail between sites to increase volume densities and lower the average postage cost per piece. Sophisticated operational processes such as these were implemented by the mailing industry to increase operational efficiency and reduce the postage per piece. As processing complexity increases, so does the likelihood that errors will occur, which reduces the accuracy of the reports and increases the likelihood of large USPS fines and client billing problems.
A need still exists for improved mail processing techniques and equipment that resolve many of the quality issues and ensure accurate reporting for mail processed in a sorting operation. A related need exists for a method of processing and preparing a mailing that ensures a valid audit and USPS revenue protection.